The Void 3:33 Ep #5: Nate Newton (Converge) & Steve Brodsky (Cave In) On Blood Moon Collaboration, Hardcore History & More
In this week’s edition of The Void 3:33 podcast, Converge bassist Nate Newton and Steve Brodsky of Cave In discuss their shared and untold history of Boston hardcore, their new band with Chelsea Wolfe, new music with almost all of their bands and lots more. Highlights from our hour-long conversation are below.
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Steve Brodsky on Nate Newton and “The Scoop”:
Stephen: “I was really impressed by what Kurt [Ballou of Converge] and I call “The Scoop” in Nate’s voice that’s that like this rising thing that comes from the guttural insides and it’s got an upwards trajectory from the soul projected out of the mouth hole. And just as a real primal, just quintessential sonically ear pleasing scoop. Yeah. Kurt and I have discussed this.”
Nate & Stephen on their new collaborative band Blood Moon with Chelsea Wolfe:
Stephen: “One of my favourite Converge songs is “Worms Will Feed.” And the thing I love about that song aside from being just like a slow burning bruiser is the vocal orchestration – the way that the vocals are spread out between Nate, Jake and Kurt. Going into Blood Moon I was really excited to sort of conceptualise that to some of the stuff that we were writing and expand upon it and, you know, having everybody chiming in and that sort of way, so, I don’t know. Yeah, my imagination really has been running wild with it, and I’m stoked to jump back in when we can.”
Nate: “It’s just been everybody like sending ideas around and then people adding to them. We had a few rehearsals where at least all the East Coast people got together and you know, worked on some ideas and sent those to Ben and Chelsea. I mean, nothing’s done. But we have a lot of material to work with. Had COVID not happened, we probably would have already been done recording an album, but everything got thrown into the you know, into the garbage. And now we’re just waiting to dump the garbage cans back on ourselves.
Chelsea has toured with a stage set and she’s very particular about her visuals, and how her live set is presented. It’s amazing and it’s powerful. Coming from playing hardcore it’s always been the antithesis of that. For us. It’s always been like, you get up there, and you take nothing, and you make it into something. [However] I like the idea of bringing in that visual aspect [when we tour this, even though] it seems really daunting to me because it’s just something that I’ve never been able to do.
I think what I’m getting at is that with this project, though, it’s so different and it’s so much its own thing that I really feel like this is like the first time musically or creatively I’ve felt like there is just no limits put on it. It’s just like, “Do f**king anything. I don’t care. Let’s just see what happens.”
Nate Newton on where Converge’s unique sound come from:
Nate: “Magic. A, Kurt in his weird mind. Like he, nobody else thinks like Kurt, that and he. He comes up with so many ideas that it’s like, kind of it bowls you over at first. You’re just like, “Whoa, okay. Let’s make sense of all this.” I think back then there was a real desire to not only, you know, be technically proficient, which, again, makes me wonder why the hell they wanted me to play bass, but also to war all your influences on your sleeve and Kurt [and all of those guys] were into a pretty wide range of music and so I think they just really wanted to show like I’m not you know, we aren’t just this one thing. Yeah. And you know and and I understood that that that was I felt like all of our little, little, you know, community was kind of coming from that same mindset.”
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